Tawdry Tuesday: Lend Me Thy Buttocks (NSFW)

Priapeia 1.3:

“I could say to you, obscurely, ‘Give me what you might give me constantly without losing any of it. Give me what you will perhaps one day desire to give in vain, when that hateful beard besieges your cheeks, and what he who, taken by the sacred bird, now mixes cups pleasing to his lover, once gave to Jove; what a maiden gives to her desirous husband on the first night, while she in her inexperience fears the wound of the other spot.’ But it is a lot simpler to say in plain Latin, ‘let me get in that ass.’ What can I do? My Minerva is thick (crass)!”

Here’s an alternative translation from Leonard C. Smithers and Sir Richard Burton:

Darkly might I to thee say: Oh give me for ever and ever
What thou may’st constantly give while of it nothing be lost:
Give me what vainly thou’lt long to bestow in the days that are coming
When that invidious beard either soft cheek shall invade;
What unto Jove gave he who, borne by the worshipful flyer,
Mixes the gratefullest cups, ever his leman’s delight;
What on the primal night maid gives to her love-longing bridegroom
Dreading ineptly the hurt dealt to a different part.
Simpler far to declare in our Latin, Lend me thy buttocks;
What shall I say to thee else? Dull’s the Minerva of me.

Priapea 68 - Wikipedia

Obscure poteram tibi dicere: ‘da mihi, quod tu
des licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit.
da mihi, quod cupies frustra dare forsitan olim,
cum tenet obsessas invida barba genas,
quodque Iovi dederat, qui raptus ab alite sacra
miscet amatori pocula grata suo,
quod virgo prima cupido dat nocte marito,
dum timet alterius vulnus inepta loci.’
simplicius multo est ‘da pedicare’ Latine
dicere: quid faciam? crassa Minerva mea est.

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